California Housing Crisis Essay

In 1969, Massachusetts fashioned the law 40B, famously referred to as the “Anti-Snob Zoning Act”, which allows developers to bypass land use restrictions in towns where less than ten percent of the housing meets the state definition of affordable. There are multiple positions and solutions to friction in Massachusetts largely inspired by controversy surrounding the State's affordable housing law, Massachusetts General Laws chapter 40B between housing advocates and open space advocates. This thesis reviews and critiques the current law, and diagnoses various legislative proposals for the progressive feud.

Every New Yorker has the right to a safe and affordable place to live in. New York’s shortage of affordable housing has reached a crisis point. Poor and elderly people throughout New York City are at a greater risk of homelessness and forced low-income residents do not have food or medical care to stay in their homes. A sinful structure of homelessness in New York City is New York’s shortage of affordable housing. Millions of New Yorkers are desperate to find affordable housing and tens of thousands are forced to live either in dirty shelters or on the streets. Recent data indicates that nearly 60,000 people, including more than 23,000 children, stay in the city’s main homeless shelter system (Guelpa). A small amount of poor renter households received a housing subsidy from the local government. Little assistance is being provided which means that most poor families and individuals that seek assistance

Many of the housing uses zoning power delegated by government officials to assure that certain races such as blacks don’t move into their neighborhood. Zoning power is regulating the use of land by state governments and local governments to exercise authority over privately owned real

The problem is there is inevitably a lack of housing, due to homelessness and influx of people. Without enough housing, the prices of the homes will be very expensive; however, if there is not a balanced mix of luxury and affordable housing, those already living there will be forced to leave because they will not be able to maintain taxes and other increases that will be tacked on to housing expenses. In order to make this process a bit more feasible, New York created the “Inclusionary Zoning program.” This program required “that developers set aside a certain percentage of units in a new development as affordable units.” The issue with this zoning ordinance is that although it was stated as a “requirement” the city kept it as a voluntary process.” With the ordinance being voluntary and developers with a capitalist mentality, many developers opted out of adhering to the ordinance. Although the residents of New York may not be in the power broker or decision-making classification, many of its inhabitants have been there for many years. Unless there are efforts to make this ordinance mandatory, there will be much opposition to keep new development out.

California’s housing situation is severe compared to the rest of the United States. California is included in the top three states with the most “housing cost burdened individuals” (Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, 2015). In a list of 20 cities where rents were highest compared to income, 10 of the 20 cities were in California with Los Angeles, CA topping the list (Dewan, 2014). Opponents might say that households in poverty could never afford housing due to their impoverished state but poverty measures of California show that the abnormally high cost of housing in California makes matters more severe and causes the amount of households that are severely cost afflicted to increase. Furthermore, when poverty measures take into account California’s uniquely expensive and insufficient housing supply, the results show that housing costs contribute significantly to poverty. For example, when housing costs were included in the California Poverty Measure as well as federal Supplemental Poverty Measure, the poverty rates rose substantially (Wimer, Mattingly, & Levin, 2013) (Short, 2015). And when high housing costs were artificially substituted with low housing costs, poverty rates significantly dropped (Bohn, Danielson, & Levin, 2013). And it’s not just the poor who are affected! Even those who are moderate income earners are becoming financially burdened by high housing costs. Those who are moderately well off compared to low income earners are financially burdened by rent costs in expensive cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, CA (Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University,

It is often easy to castigate large cities or third world countries as failures in the field of affordable housing, yet the crisis, like an invisible cancer, manifests itself in many forms, plaguing both urban and suburban areas. Reformers have wrestled passionately with the issue for centuries, revealing the severity of the situation in an attempt for change, while politicians have only responded with band aid solutions. Unfortunately, the housing crisis easily fades from our memory, replaced by visions of homeless vets, or starving children. Metropolis magazine explains that “…though billions of dollars are spent each year on housing and development programs worldwide, ? At least 1 billion people

Did you know that Applied Survey Research counted a total of 4,539 homeless people last year in Sonoma County alone? I can vouch for the authenticity and methods used in this survey because I assisted as a counter. I am passionate about the social issue of homelessness, mainly because I was part of this population a decade ago. Applied Survey Research defines homelessness in part as, “An individual who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence…” The sad fact is that there are not enough resources to adequately shelter America’s most vulnerable citizens. Many cities have passed ordinances that have criminalized homelessness. These so called quality of life ordinances are meant to protect the society at large. Homeless people

They gain access to programs and services after they get settled in, such as rehabilitation programs, on the job training, and a social worker assigned specifically to them. These programs and services are completely voluntary and by no means required by the resident. “Through housing-first, Utah reduced its chronically-homeless population 72 percent between 2005 and 2014.” (Semuels) This statistic shows that housing-first would be a very fast and effective solution to the United States’ homelessness problem. Another way the US could cut down on homeless people is to require developers to provide both permanent supportive housing and low-income housing in their buildings. This is a solution because homes can be made available to a larger part of the population. This kind of mixed-use housing helps create communities made up of different individuals who in turn look out for one another, for example, “in one building in Harlem, single moms living in affordable housing helped out the ex-cons living in supportive housing, and vice versa.” (Semuels)

Over the years Los Angeles has had the highest number of homeless people; this situation has been highly overlooked by media and political attention. Cities in many parts of the world may be known as centers for poverty whether if it 's a developed or developing country. No city, state, or country is prone to homelessness. Los Angeles in particular is an entry point for many immigrants who come to look for jobs. The intentions are not to cause there to be a vulnerability to poverty but to try to make a living some how. “Skid Row homeless population originates in South LA – where services and shelters lack resource adequacy and unemployment rates are high among adult men – and policy discussions rarely focus on this trend” (Howard, 4). Los Angeles Skid Row, is known to have the heaviest homeless population compared to other cities. Los Angeles does provide some homeless services like shelter and low-cost housing options for the poor but one of the issues that many homeless people come across is the lack of healthcare. Everyone can suffer from physical and mental health issues but there is a bigger impact on the homeless people in the Los Angeles county because they are not obtaining the proper help mentally, physically, and socially. Many people lose their lives or spread many disease amongst the community. The city of Los Angeles should provide healthcare for the homeless because this issue affects the homeless and everyone else around. More disease are passed around, more

When evaluating urban renewal projects, Professor Steven Cord found that “By far most of the housing destroyed was low cost housing,” (184). The statistics in Kelo also showed that 56 percent of nonwhites and 38 percent of whites displaced by urban renewal were qualified to receive public housing due to their low incomes. Further, the destruction of housing forces individuals to seek relocation housing. Relocation housing is not guaranteed to be readily available or to be superior to the housing destroyed (Cord 185). Eminent domain has broken up neighborhoods and forced out longtime residents (Cord 184).

At the time of the article, on any given night, 5500 persons were homeless in King County on any given night; 1300 on the street and 4200 in transitional housing (www.kingcounty.gov). According to the Committee to End Homelessness’s 2010 estimates, the homeless population in King County hovers around 8000 nightly in the cities and rural areas. Nearly 3000 of these meet the federal criteria for habitual homeless. Even more startling is the fact that close to thirty percent of the county’s homeless is mentally ill. Others are victims of domestic violence or homeless due to unemployment, substance abuse or some economic hardship. Longstanding efforts at reducing or eliminating homelessness have been geared toward policing the homeless population. This method has proven costly, inadequate and often ineffective. The prevailing mindset now is that access to housing before those suffering become chronically homeless is the only sensible and economically logical way to end homelessness. It’s a more hands on, direct approach that could provide long-term answer to homelessness (www.kingcounty.gov/homelessness).

Demographics: California, Florida, Arkansas, Nevada, Mississippi, and Oregon are the only six states in which more than half of the homeless population are living in unsheltered locations (Henry, Cortes & Morris, 2013). In Florida alone, (8 percent of 47,862 people are homeless), California (22 percent of 136,826 people), New York (13 percent of 77,430), Texas (5 percent of 29,615), and Massachusetts (3 percent of 19,039) (Henry et al., 2013). While the largest decreases in homelessness since 2012 were seen in Florida and Colorado, twenty-three other states experienced an increase in homelessness between 2007 and

Inclusionary zoning is a tool to help accomplish affordable housing. The main goal of it is to build a certain percentages of house but to where the houses can be afforded by middle/low income earners. Incentives are provided to act as cost offsets and include density bonuses, tax abatement, and reduced parking charges. Density bonuses motivate developers to have additional units which result in an increased profit margin. On subscription to the inclusionary zoning, benefits accrued eventually lower costs that would have otherwise been charged on the developers. This technique provides a sustainable method of dealing with housing shortage (Dietderich 13). The municipality, however, cannot force developers to set a particular minimum price and therefore the government can only provide incentives to developers to voluntarily provide the units for low-income earners.

When new development or renovations on empty lots begin the citizens of the communities start asking amount them who will be the beneficiary of the gentrification. Even the displaced of mom and pop businesses are disappear. And the neighborhood no longer can afford to leave on such communities. The question is how does gentrification impact the government? Well, government plays a big role in serving low income to citizens. It create apartment that an affordable to them. It doesn’t impact the government on a negative way because they generate new policies and programs that help the people from the community. So, many types of local and states polices are design to accommodate affordable houses, even though the cost are increasing. One of the several program that the government had is one called “inclusionary zoning” (IZ). The characteristics for this program are: “(1) whether they are mandatory or voluntary, (2) what size or type of development projects are affected, (3) the required share of affordable units, (4) the

However, there are many not supportive of the legislation of growth management for various reasons including government control. As quoted in the attitudes toward growth management publication, “the system has also been criticized for placing the state in the role of a command and control entity, rather than the role of a facilitator and advisor to localities on planning issues” (Connerly, 2004). While there remains to be a great number of supporters for growth management, many Florida residents are not in support of government intervention. The citizen’s stance against too much government control brings focus on the political aspect of urban planning and growth management.